I am happy to report that I have successfully replaced the stock 256GB PM951 drive with the 512GB Samsung 950 PRO using the steps below taken from the Notebook Review forums here:http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr…-review-swapping-instructions-cloning.771316/
Before you start, just remember that opening the bottom panel to access the hard drive may VOID YOUR WARRANTY so please do this at your own risk. You are going to need a Torx 5 screwdriver and the set I used can be purchased here from Amazon: http://amzn.to/1SYcbZO
The Samsung 950 PRO can be purchased here: http://amzn.to/1SYcjIU
How I cloned to these drives:
- Use Macrium to create WinPE bootable recovery USB key flash drive.
- Use Macrium to create a FULL PARTITION BACKUP of your Blade’s original drive onto anexternal USB drive that can hold it.
- Put the new empty drive in the blade, as above.
- Boot the Macrium WinPE USB key: (hold F12 on boot when prompted to choose boot drive)
- Select “Restore”, Choose the backup file on the USB drive from step 2.
- Choose the empty drive you installed in the Razer as the destination.
- Restore away, will take some time depending on the speed of your USB drive.
- Power down, disconnect all the USB stuff and try to boot.
- If it works, YAY, if it doesn’t.. I had to do this other stuff as well…
- Reconnect your Macrium USB recovery KEY, boot from that again, this time without the old drive connected over USB
- Attempt to fix the Windows boot problems again (same menu option). This time, it should actually work with all green checks.
- Try to boot again, should work this time.
- Thanks @mario64, they had to use AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition 5.6 to extend the new partition to the full free space of the drive.
Things to note:
- Macium reflex makes backup and restore incredibly easy. It will back up all the partitions, INCLUDING a PERFECT copy of the Recovery partition on the stock drive
- When booting into the Macrium WinPE USB drive, the mouse for some reason doesn’t work. You will need to do everything on the touch screen. Don’t worry! It is touch friendly!!!
- After successfully restoring, you will notice that your new drive will have only 256GB instead of 512GB… Don’t worry! Follow Step 13 above to fix that! Just Merge the partitions using the Partition Assistant Software!
- New drive is screaming fast!
Hi Louie,
I'm planning on upgrading my stealth to a samsung 950 pro as well and I believe your steps are going to be of immense help. Did you have to buy the full version of Macium Reflect or is it okay to use the trial version only? On their site it says the trial version is the same except that there is no "ReDeploy."
This is going to be my first time upgrading an ssd so I'm kind of hesitant and don't want to buy and start without knowing everything first.
Thanks in advance!
Leon
I am pretty sure this part is going to enhance the speed of the processing of your laptop for sure. Having such huge space means that you are able to store large amount of data.